An international ice cricket tournament has been played on Lake St. Moritz since 1988 and now in Estonia every year since 2004. The inventor of the Estonian version is credited to Jason Barry, a British ex-pat and former Estonian cricket president who was determined to increase the visibility of Estonian cricket throughout the year.
The summer game of cricket is applied to some of the harshest, most wintry conditions. The difference between Ice Cricket and other forms of cricket played in the winter is that Ice Cricket is played directly on the ice, no mat is laid down. The results are a little more unpredictable and provide more fun and variety.
The ball is the same as an indoor cricket ball, a composite plastic red ball which makes it relatively easy to find if it gets hit into a snowdrift.
The Ice Cricket World Championship is held annually in the Estonian city of Tallinn. With winter temperatures of minus 10 to minus 25, the tournaments are played on Harku boating lake, which freezes over rapidly in early January.
Read more about Ice Cricket: Rules
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or cricket:
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)